April 28, 2009

Playing Life with my kid

So I’m playing the game of Life a couple of Saturdays ago with my son and three spins in, I’m sweating. It’s hard enough playing real life without tackling Milton Bradley’s version. The insurance hassles, the sudden downward lurches in salary—we just started, and already I’m scanning the board for a space marked “Chapter 11.”

I have yet to beat my son at this game. That’s fine (he’ll pay for these humiliations later) but I do wonder what he’s learning about life from Life.

He has never once started off the game taking the “college” route, as opposed to the “career” route. He’s written off the higher education option altogether. He doesn’t see why anyone should cough up $100,000 so early in the game. I always take the college route, and lose. I can never seem to get out from under the school loans, and I end up at the poor farm.

For the record, the poor farm has been revised in the game’s newer versions. The end-point alternatives are “Millionaire Estates” and, rather than the poor farm—which seems like a pretty good option in this economy; a farm sounds solid, even if it’s a poor farm—dear old “Countryside Acres.” What, no third option? “Box Over Heating Grate”?

A recession is a strange time to play Life, a game introduced as The Checkered Game of Life by Milton Bradley in the 1860s. Monopoly became popular during the Great Depression but, whatever the economic state of the nation, that game offers the comfort of retro-Atlantic City trappings and the dangled carrot of affordable home ownership (Mediterranean and Baltic), not to mention the quaint notion of the Community Chest. (A film version of Monopoly has been in the works for years.)

The game of Life, by contrast, is 100 percent crushing realism. You land on the square delivering unto the player another child, and you think: another newborn, signified by a pink or blue peg inserted into your tiny little board-game car? Who’s gonna feed this one?

My opponent lands on the square for starry-eyed investors with money to lose. “Dad, what’s this mean? ‘Invest in Broadway play. Pay $15,000’?” He can afford it; he has already squirreled away several hundred thousand dollars.

“Well, John, it’s complicated,” I tell him. “These days Broadway investors enter into what’s known as a ‘royalty pool,’ which is different from the old days, when— ”

“Yeah?” I’m losing him. In fact, I’m losing me. “Does this have anything to do with the game?”

“Sort of. No. But listen: The original investors in the musical ‘Cats’? Which is a terrible musical, by the way—”

“That’s an opinion, that’s not a fact.”

“A distinction I’m glad you’re clear on. But those original investors in that terrible, terrible show? They’re rich now. One guy in England put 10,000 pounds into ‘Cats’ and he’s made 20,000 pounds a year since.”

“Wow. That’s a lot.”

“On the other hand, the Chicago people who put money into ‘Seussical the Musical?’ That money is gone.”

“But they were rich to begin with, right?”

“Probably. But no thanks to ‘Seussical.’”

He sighs. “Your spin, Dad.”

One turn later, my modest policeman’s salary has been cut in half, and I land on “Mid-life crisis. Start new career.”

Then the doorbell rings. It’s Liam and Clancy, my son’s friends from across the street. It’s a sunny day. Game called on account of life.

The kids outside, I run through my postgame analysis. Let’s see: In 30 minutes of playing Life, I paid my taxes, I got married, I became a cop, I bought a house, I insured everything I should have insured. Then I got creamed by a stock dive. I would have lost the game even if the market hadn’t crashed.

And yet I’m smiling, because, once again, I have been bested by our cool-headed 8-year-old capitalist, on whom our golden years at Countryside Acres so clearly depend.

This is an absolutely wonderful post. A lovely divergence from the world of cinema for a day.

I can tell I've gotten older by the way I view the game of Life. When I was a wee-tyke (I'm told), I loved to just spin the wheel because of the clicking sound. When I was old enough to understand, I began to analyze the choices based on how to win (job earlier, no kids). Now every time I spin the wheel it's with complete dread - hating the sound - because it ultimately means more money from my pocket and a heavier car.

I suppose in another 30 years or so I'll probably forget everything, spin the wheel, buy Park Place, and start yelling that I sunk my opponent's battleship. As a great man once said (that's a falsehood, it was Tim Rice): "That's the circle of life."

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